The holidays have now come and gone in a fair number of places, though they’re technically still going until the 6th in Iceland (though my classes have already started, thanks to a professor who thinks it’s ok to start classes before the university semester eve begins)! That means that it’s a good time to reflect on all the good fun and good beer the holiday season brought. Chiefly, I am quite proud of the good run of Christmas Beer (Jólabjór) I had, pictured here in chronological order from left (oldest) to right (newest).

I ended with the Viking Yule Bock on New Year’s Day, which seemed like a fitting time to complete my collection. In truth, I wasn’t really planning on making a new year’s post as I felt like the “closeout” post from last time, which was quite extensive, offered up a good bit of coverage. I was just planning on mentioning the beer in a future post and leaving that at that. However, sometimes something happens that is just profoundly blog-worthy, and sometimes such a thing (literally) comes in with a bang.

Yes, SB and I got to experience New Year’s Eve in Iceland, and boy oh boy, was it a spectacle. Unlike many cities, Reykjavík has no formal fireworks display on New Years. What!? You might ask. Well, you needn’t worry. Despite having no “official” fireworks display, the fireworks that went off here were absolutely mind-boggling, and far, FAR surpassed anything I’ve ever seen. How so? Well, you could almost call it “crowd sourcing” a giant, mutli-hour long fireworks display. SB and I knew that fireworks were big here (literally and figuratively), but we had just no idea how big. Per the city of Reykjavík’s website, over 500 tons. Yes 500+ tons, of fireworks are launched by the local denizens. I find that number entirely believable.

Now, if you read my previous post, you’ll noticed that I mentioned “10-15 spontaneous displays” starting at 2pm and going quite late in the days leading up to the New Year. The funny thing, is that I actually edited that upward from 5-10. Turns out the fun was only just beginning. The evening of New Year’s Eve started.. well, more around like 12:30pm and then lasted until sometime after we went to bed at 2am the next morning. The fireworks started well within our narrow band of daylight (impatient, lol) and then really began to pick up once it got dark in the afternoon. Before too long it sounded and looked like we were in a war zone.

As a photo won’t do it much justice, I’m going to try to post a video here. I rarely post videos via the blog interface, so we’ll see how this works. You’ll definitely need volume to fully appreciate the war zone like vibe to it.

Assuming that works properly for you, you’ll have hopefully heard what I was referring to with the war zone bit. That went on for hours, and hours. Until eventually the entire horizon (and right next to us) was just a smattering of slowly escalating fireworks and flares, lots of flares too.

The interesting bit is that yes, the fireworks build and build, but then right around 10:30pm they almost entirely stop. Indeed, if you pay attention you’ll notice that pretty much everything stops. Suddenly there’s no traffic, no party noise, and only a few pockets of fireworks continue paired with a lone flare or two lazily floating towards the earth. What is so particular about 10:30pm you might ask? Áramótaskaupið.

Yeah, try saying that one five times fast. Áramótaskaupið, which translates to “New Year’s Eve’s Ridicule” is a television show that airs from 10:30pm to roughly 11:30pm on New Year’s Eve in Iceland, and has without fail since 1966. Áramótaskaupið, or often, just “skaupið,” is a comedy/variety show that focuses on the closing year from an extremely satirical standpoint. It’s known for being quite ruthless in its portrayal of events, individuals, trends, etc. It’s also insanely popular with Icelanders. Not only are the ratings some of the highest in the world, skaupið also retains a massive percentage of the country’s population as viewers. Some years have seen the viewing numbers as high as 95.5% of the country’s population. I don’t mean viewing population, I mean, literally, 95.5% of the entire country watched the show. While not confirmed by any record-keeping source that I can fine, this viewership has been said to be a record in television history.

So, things get quiet for a little while because almost everyone has just went inside to watch Áramótaskaupið. We watched it too!

Granted, it’s almost entirely in Icelandic (aside from a few bits making fun of tourists), so we were a bit limited in the uptake, but a few skits required no comprehension of Icelandic to appreciate.

Of course, the real craziness comes after Áramótaskaupið ends, usually sometime in the 11:20 – 11:30pm range. As everyone goes back to their fireworks arsenal, things begin to build exponentially, especially around 11:35pm as all battle stations are manned again by then. The result is an ever-building crescendo that builds so much steam it not only blows through the stroke of midnight, but keeps going well past the bell’s toll to the point that you can’t help but wonder if Iceland is fending off the largest aerial raid in human history. Here’s a video taken at some point around the midnight hour.

As one Icelander I spoke to put it, “On New Year’s Eve we go to war with the sky.” I thought that was pretty apt. It was absolutely crazy. Plus, as mentioned, it just kept going and while it did calm down after a bit, they were still sporadically launching fireworks until about 11pm on January 4th. So yes, fireworks are a big bid deal – and that isn’t even counting their upcoming return on Þrettándinn. [Update: Þrettándinn ended up being pretty crazy too, with fireworks until 2:30am or so, and they were quite loud as the nearest bonfire was only about 2 blocks from our house.]

But, as we didn’t really know what we were getting ourselves into, we had some other, smaller-scale festivities planned for the Dinosaur Bear household. You have to keep yourself busy in your concrete bunker during the fireworks apocalypse in order to avoid cabin fever, after all!

First, I made us some slow-cooked lamb stew, with beer, potatoes, red cabbage, onions, mushrooms, and a bunch of spices. We had it with toasted bread and “Sød Fransk Sennep” or Sweet French Mustard. It was quite yummy – plus we had leftovers for more New Year’s cabbage.

We paired it with some also-yummy ice cream, and then later moved onto the drinks, of course! In addition to the aforementioned Christmas Beers, we also had a couple of specialty items. The first, is the famous Brennivín. Brennivín, which I’ve mentioned before, is an Icelandic unsweetened schnapps made from fermented grain or potato mash and flavored with caraway and is generally in the 37.5-40% ABV range. It’s unofficially Iceland’s Iceland’s signature distilled beverage and is the traditional drink for the mid-winter feast of Þorrablót. It’s also seen paired with kæstur hákarl, which I discussed in my Westfjords Post.

It was SB and I’s first time having it (woo we’ve now had both it and kæstur hákarl), and despite not being hard alcohol people we both agreed it was pretty good (for hard alcohol). We tried it a few times straight to get it’s full flavor, and then experimented with mixing it into a few different things (orange juice: no, Sprite: yes). We both got a bit of a fruity/minty vibe from it and we much preferred it to vodka, with which it is sometimes compared but is actually quite different.

We also tried Barley Wine for the first time.

We’d been meaning to try it for awhile, and SB actually picked some up a few weeks ago – we just decided to save it for the holidays. Our mutual reactions were Taco: 2.5/5.0 and SB 0.5/5.0 – so as you can see, lukewarm to outright disgust, lol. I actually ended up finishing SB’s for her, as I didn’t think it was nearly as bad as she did. It’s an interesting thing to describe, sort of beer, sort of really heavy wine, and our variety clocked in at 10% ABV. Would I drink it again? Yes. Would I drink it often? Definitely no.

The last of our alcoholic adventures was this little fellow, Birkir Snaps.

This drink was an impulse purchase, because it sounded interesting. Birkir Snaps is an Icelandic distilled grain spirit which uses Icelandic birch, picked during the spring, as its primary flavoring element. So yes, that is a twig you see in the bottle.

It’s just a special Icelandic twig. Obviously this one had some very woody flavors, with a bit of freshness to it that I’m not well-versed enough in non-beer to describe. I liked it a bit less than the Brennivín, but it wasn’t so bad I couldn’t drink it. We still have a bit left, and will probably try mixing it with something, though the birch-flavor isn’t a typical mixing platform.

Now, if our air raid fireworks, food, and copious amount of alcohol don’t sound like a good enough time for you, we also went full on rave.

Yes, courtesy of a well-placed endcap at Bónus we picked up three glow-bracelets and a pair of glow-sunglasses for New Year’s. Naturally these quickly became the boys’, and it is the boys who retained them for almost the entire evening, complete with epic red Yule-lad candle lighting for their rave.

In fact, by the time we finally rolled into bed around 2:00am, Tristen wasn’t quite ready to stop the rave, so we booted up some classic Sandstorm and let him get in a few more sweet moves.

The funny thing is, despite the package saying that the bracelets/glasses would glow for 6 hours, the red and green bracelets lasted more like 12 hours, and the glasses lasted for about a solid 24 hours (though very faint by the end). Definitely good value for the small amount of money we paid for them. A ravers gotta rave, ya’ know.

Anyways, that’s a good recap of our crazy, fireworks-laden New Year’s Eve exponanza. It was a lot of fun, and most certainly contained a bunch of unexpected surprises!

I hope you had an enjoyable New Year’s celebration as well! Here’s to 2018!

Look at me, all sliding into the final hours of 2017 with one last post. Don’t get too excited, despite the name this isn’t going to be any cool introspective recap of 2017. That can be found by reading all of 2017’s posts (all 21 of them). 😛

Instead I’m just going to talk about two primary things. First – Part 1, what I’ve been up to, and second – Part 2, some thoughts on school now that the first semester is in the books. So let’s get started with Part 1!

First off, if you’re wondering what the weather has been like lately, well, mostly crap to be honest. 😀

A startlingly accurate depiction of recent walking conditions here on the coast.

A lot of that has been due to the wind (see above, that’s a photo from Reykjavík), but there’s also just the cold in general, plus the lack of daylight. But, life must go on, so despite the changed conditions I still get up and around for the gym in the mornings.

In case you were wondering, yes that’s the gym I go to. It’s pretty small (and old), but its only a 6 minute walk from me and since it’s through the university it’s actually quite affordable for Iceland.

Also, despite what it might look like, those photos were taken in the morning, not at night. As you can see from the clock on the wall if you are eagle-eyed, it’s 7:15 – meaning that “sunlight” is still over 4 hours away at that point. I put sunlight in scare quotes because the sun doesn’t really come “up” it just sort of stays below the horizon and moves sideways. Indeed, most mornings in the apartment look like this..

..until we are long out the door. It’s grand. It also, on the flip side, gets dark very, very early. In fact I’d say there is far more moon than sun these days.

But, the positive aspect of that is that since sunrise is at like 11:30am, you are always up to see the good ones!

It doesn’t always mean you can fully enjoy them though, for instance this nice sunrise was taken right before a final exam, so I was a bit distracted – though not so much that I didn’t stop to take a photo of it!

Of course the bad news is that by the time the sun “rises” it’s already starting to set. For instance, this next photo is basically right after sunrise, yet the sun is already going down over Pigsten’s construction site.

Speaking of his construction site, boy it’s changed a lot! For one, they are now done with what I’ll call Stage 1 of the pit nearest to us.

They are simultaneously working on two buildings, and it’s taken them since we’ve moved here to finalize the earthworks. The contractors have also changed over, and now they’ve installed barricades all around the pit. Which I guess makes sense since the wind kept pwning the chain-link fence.

Pigsten rarely lets any work happen without his oversight.

Pigsten also got a new friend and helper! Broli (the baby Brachiosaurus) came with a card and some treats from one of the boys’ friends in the United States!

Broli and Pigsten are busy bodies and make sure everything is done right!

The plant buddies are also there for assistance, as they have since moved up into the bedroom window ledge to maximize their exposure to our limited sunlight.

Speaking of “buddies” awhile back I found a visitor on the way out in the morning.

Yes, a cat (or “rat” as Tristen calls them) was waiting for me on the stairs. An enemy deep in King Tristen’s domain. I don’t think it was the dreaded Yule Cat, as this was a bit too early for it, plus this cat was especially non-ferocious. Or maybe that was just a guise? Tristen always says there are two things you don’t trust: cats and raptors. Either way, it followed me around but clearly did not want to go outside into the cold.

Can’t say I blame it – though when I got back someone had shooed it outside (probably Tristen). Speaking of the Yule Cat, the boys started reading their Yule Lad book just as the first Yule Lad came into town.

They diligently kept up with the book as the days progressed, even getting treats from each Yule Lad. For instance one left them a Christmas candle that they then used while reading about the next Yule Lad!

They also left the Yule Lads plenty of treats to entice them, such as some yummy Laufabrauð.

Or in one case an entire tub of Skyr. Yep. In my boot.

But, in addition to all the Yule Lad fun we had to do some much more mundane things, such prepare for an take final exams. I’ll discuss the exams more in a bit, but they were definitely a less-than-fun part of December.

However, as SB and I have a long history of doing, we curtailed the exam-time woes with lots of delicious noms, such as gingerbread-cinnamon-roll-bites and coffee!

We’ve branched out quiet a bit with our coffee over the holiday season, from local roasters..

..to more commercial “Christmas Blends.”

But that’s not all, as if it is any surprise I’ve also being trying lots of Christmas beers (Jólabjór)!

There’s quite a variety of them, from both microbreweries to macrobreweries.

In total I am set to try 10 or so of the Christmas beers, I’ll post a photo of them all in a later post.

We’ve also tried the ubiquitous Malt og Appelsín (Jólabland), which you know, actually turned out to be pretty good. I really, really did not think I would like it, but it is something I’d certainly drink again. Now, mind you, it’s not something I’d drink a lot of, but as a seasonal thing, definitely (it also apparently comes back around during Easter, just under a different name).

It’s hard to understate just how prolific the Christmas drinks are, they are not only widely available, but they are numerous in variety. Heck, some of them even have their own Christmas decorations!

On the whole I’d say the stores are much less plastic and gaudy here insofar as Christmas goes. Yet, don’t mistake that for a lack of stuff – there is plenty of that, from the Jólabókaflóð, to all the delicious food (and booze), to metric tons worth of lakkrís – there is plenty of holiday to be had. There was also a massive surge of coloring books, complete with… toothpaste. Yes, toothpaste.

And oh yeah, that’s right next to the frozen meat, in case you were wondering.

But, we passed on the toothpaste accented coloring books and instead opted for cookies. Oh lawds, so many kinds of cookies. One really interesting variety was these delicacies:

I don’t remember what they were called in Icelandic, but they tasted EXACTLY like Oreos, except with magical sparkles and a star shape. I’m talking, these were more like Oreos than any non-Oreo (even fake Oreo wannabes) I’ve ever had. They were nummy.

We’ve also had lots of gingerbread stuff (in addition to the rolls above), including gingerbread cake and classic gingerbread cookies, such as the free ones from Háskólabúðin!

Yes, they have a coffee bean filled counter, it’s pretty neat I think.

Another fun thing is that we received our first care package. Yay!

I mean, sure it took 1 day short of an entire month to arrive, and Tollstjóri (customs) took some stuff out of it due to their really opaque (and seemingly ever-changing) rules, but it did arrive! Thanks Meem!

Yes, between the weather, the Yule Lads, and the pressies, the holidays were definitely in the air. The city has definitely shifted into the season as well.

It’s kinda hard to see, since my old phone’s camera is pretty abhorrent absent 1 octillion candle-watt conditions, but Perlan has acquired new red accenting. In fact, it even changes between red and green! It’s really cool. Here is another shot, complete with Pigsten’s construction site in action. This was probably around 5pm or so.

In addition to red and green, they even had Perlan lit up like the Icelandic Flag for a bit, in addition to other random patterns consisting of white, blue, green, and red. Right now it’s all lit up red, except for one light which is blue and which cycles between that and white.

Other fun additions include wreathes around Tjörnin, which I’ve mentioned before but are always pretty.

Beyond decorations, the environment itself feels very holiday-like, or perhaps more accurately I could just say it feels extremely cold. As in, the geothermal-heat-of-the-earth-itself-creates-steam-cold.

But, not a whole lot you can do about that besides bundle up, and I really do mean bundle up. I don’t remember the last time my layers didn’t have layers. 🙂

Besides, the holidays require holiday shopping, and in Iceland online shopping really isn’t a thing, so we’ve braved the conditions on several occasions to go to some non-standard stores. One trip took us back down to the harbor area. There were a couple of vessels there which I thought was part of Iceland’s Coast Guard (which commands a whopping armada of 4 ships), but I found out they were actually ships from the Royal Danish Navy.

I’m not sure about the shift on the left (as pictured), but the ship on the right is the HDMS Hvidbjoernen (F360).

We also did some Christmas-pressie shopping on Laugavegur, where one shop had a nice side-by-side of Iceland’s two most famous birds.

I’ll leave it to you to guess which is which. 😛

Our shopping also allowed us to experience a bit of the pre-holiday festivities, such as this skating rink we stumbled upon.

The whole of downtown has a very nice Christmas vibe to it.

Even the university itself, which is generally pretty brutalist, has gotten into the holiday spirit.

As have SB and I of course! This has been a very different holiday season, in that we aren’t going to see family at for the first time ever – a step further from last year where we had to leave before New Year’s. I’d say we weren’t going “home” but I’ve come to realize that home is a very transient thing for me, so it’s easier to say that we just stayed here. Of course we weren’t actually here for Christmas, but that’s for another post. 🙂

Despite being away from family and elsewhere over Christmas, we’ve been keeping in the holiday spirit now that we are back in Iceland. One really cool (literally and figuratively) thing we did just a couple of days ago was walk on Tjörnin for the first time. In fact, we’re pretty sure it was our first time walking over a frozen lake in each of our lives (sans Valentino of course).

Taco weighing his desire to keep walking against his uncertainty about the large cracks in the ice (spoiler: he kept walking).

The ice was crazy thick. It’s hard to tell from the photo because you’ve lost the three dimensional aspects of it, but if you look closely at the crack running vertically(ish) in this photo you can see how deep the ice is. My guess was that the ice was a solid 8+ inches thick, if not more. It made zero noise while walking on it, and I legitimately believe you could have driven across the lake in a car.

We’ve also been taking in a lot of fireworks over the past several days. In fact, I dare say the Icelanders are more obsessed with fireworks around New Year’s than even the Murkans. It’s not unusual to have 10-15 spontaneous firework displays (in random spots) starting anywhere from like 2pm until late.

Another crappy phone photo, featuring a firework above Perlan and a glare that kind of makes it seem like we have two moons. Iceland isn’t that alien.

While some are just a few big’uns, others are a bonafide several minute-long bonanza. All this starting days before New Year’s – it’s been going since at least the 28th (when we got back from our Christmas trip).

But, that kind of brings us up to the present! New Year’s Eve, woo! Which I suppose means it’s time to segue into Part 2 of the post: school.

If you’ve followed along since August or so you’ll have noticed that I didn’t really talk much about school. I discussed it a bit in this post (which I recommend reading as background to this next section, at least the school portion) but outside of that I’ve been a bit mum about it, especially in contrast to my incessant whining while at HLS. A lot of that has to do with the reasons mentioned in that post – school just isn’t a huge part of my life here. I mean, yes, it is, but it’s not a big part of my ideological reasoning for being here, nor is a big part of my personal journey right now. So, when I sit down to blog, I’d rather talk about other things, such as the Westfjords. This is not to say that school doesn’t eat a lot of my time, oh it does. Indeed, it kind of annoys me with the amount of time that it requires for things that I really couldn’t care less about.

Now that I’ve got a semester behind me, I have to say that holistically I’m not a big fan of my program. A big, big part of that is that I just feel like it’s so disorganized towards international students. Though in fairness, Iceland as whole doesn’t seem to care much for people being anything other than a short-term tourist. I’m not getting into a discussion of that, but my point is that there is very, very little assistance to be found for people who are not Icelandic or who are not from the EEA (not to be confused with the EU, which Iceland wants no part of). As a result, I frequently find myself having to fight tooth and nail just to accomplish very basic administrative tasks. This of course is compounded by the very “Meh, meeeeeeeeeh, maybe at some point” culture that is pervasive here. That would be great if they weren’t also paradoxically obsessed with really early deadlines for ferners’. The result is that you often have little time to do something and no avenue for help in doing it, either because they outright don’t know (the rules are so complex that even Icelanders don’t understand them), or they don’t care enough due to the aforementioned meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh. It’s really pretty awesome, in the smash your face into a concrete block sort of a way.

The catalyst of this disorganization is the fact that my program is not the length I thought it was. I’m not going to type the entire story here, but they REALLY need to work on how they describe the program in the English language (which should be a priority, since the program is one of their few ones in English), because as it stands, they are grossly misrepresenting the timeline (I’m talking upwards of 6 months misrepresentation). I really don’t think it’s intentional, and I’ve brought this to their attention, but I also legitimately think they just don’t care. Not out of malice, but just because, well, peeps are different here, lol. My high strung, gotta be on the move, obese Amerifat DNA doesn’t mesh well with it. Though in my defense it wouldn’t as much of an issue if they didn’t hold us to oddly strict standards in spite of themselves.

So, despite the fact that I was able to somewhat fix the timeline issue (though I’m still about 2-3 months out of whack), that got me off on the wrong foot. Then I found out that despite being an ultra-specialized post-doc program, the majority of my classes are just bull-crap I don’t care about. For instance, over the course of the program I will take 10 classes (it’s mostly a research program, but I still have to take classes). I came here for environmental law – in a life that now seems quiet distant to me I’m actually a barred lawyer person – and I like environmental law. Thus, post-doc. However, and this is so dumb it’s just sad, of those 10 classes only 4, yes 4 out of 10, are strictly environmental law. There is one that you could argue is in the realm of environmental law, but even if you are generous and add that one in, that’s only 5 out of 10 classes focused on environmental law. Yes, an environmental law post-doc that is only FIFTY PERCENT environmental law, and that’s being generous. W.T.F. I did not come here to retake some fluffy pants Human Rights course I had 3 years ago in 1L, I came here to take extremely-high-level environmental law courses, and on that front, I got one, one single course, that I’d call “high level” environmental law.

Then, to make matters even worse, the classes like “Public International Law” and “International Economic Law,” are just general law classes, meaning that there are people in them who don’t even have a Masters yet (I could write an entire post about why I don’t think the two legal education systems [U.S. v. European] mesh well and why that’s negatively impacting my experience, but those are unnecessary details for this post – just know that I’m objectively more educated than my classmates – NOTE: I said more educated, not more intelligent 🙂 ). And while I’m far from a pretentious academic, the result is that you get a course aimed a people who have far less legal education than I do – and while I’m definitely no legal guru, and always appreciate learning more, it also means that the classes get boring as heck. There’s also the fact that a lot of the students are extremely unengaged. Or, in the instance of the Icelandic students, they just don’t show up to class – ever (and the exam, some of them just skip that too). Now, I’m not one to talk about being unengaged, that’s sort of defined me in the classroom environment for a few years now (see one of my many posts about what I actually like doing in the lawls – hint: it’s not sitting in a classroom). But the fact of the matter is that the students in my program, which is very small, are mixed into the general body of students as opposed to having their own schtick. Indeed, on many levels the super small size of my program seems to be more of a hindrance than a benefit, but there isn’t much I can do about that. All I can really do is enjoy the sporadic things that are more focused on the students at my level, though the director of the program cancelled half of those things last semester. Yep, dat meh.

However, while I’ve made it pretty clear that I’m not overly enthused about my classes (or the majority of my professors), I did have one professor who I actually liked – and that professor is now going to be my primary thesis advisor. So that’s pretty cool. The additional good news on that front is that despite it taking 1.5 months to get a single page completed (yes one page), my thesis topic has also supposedly been approved. I say supposedly because nothing is ever certain here. So that’s a big relief. Really my thesis is the only thing about this entire affair that still really excites me. In a lot of ways I think this program should just be the thesis, with none of the fluff classes, but (fortunately as some would say) I have no say in the matter.

The director of my program has toys in their office, I like that much. 🙂

“Yes, that’s nice” you say, “but what about your grades!” I hear you. After all, our entire existence is defined by grades amirite? Dere is nufin but gradez! Yes, because establishing someone’s worth based on a small slice of time is such a good system. But it is what it is, and after all that bitching you might expect me to say I got bad gradez, and then you’ll laugh “ha ha, look out how bitter he is!” Nah my grades are fine. I scored all “First Class” which I still don’t fully understand, but I’ve been told it means I got all As. Basically the system at the University of Iceland is thus:

I have no idea how big that will be, but you get the idea. You don’t want to be red. You want to be as far away from red as possible. I also don’t think they use a forced curve, or if they do it is NO WHERE near as severe as HLS’s. I’m quite far from red, but not in the “With Distinction” (A+) tier, and I have no goal (or motivation) to get there. I’m safely within in the realm of “First Class” – much closer to A+ than to B – and that’s more than good enough for me. But, though I generally care very little for gradez, one aspect of how I got muh gradez is worth discussing. The oral exam.

Yes, like Murka’, IDIOTIC group projects, pointless papers, and time-wasting readings abound here in Icelandia. But one thing that I’ve found in the lawls realm is that the oral exam is favored over the written exam, and now that I’d taken several of these oral exams I feel like I can comfortably comment on them. Basically they are a good deal easier than the written exams I took at HLS (though keep in mean this doesn’t mean they are “easy,” just “easier”). I don’t know if that is a format thing, or a institutional thing (my guess is more on the latter, honestly). Now, in order to explain why I think they are easier, I need to explain the format – and since self depredation is always fun, I’ll just go ahead and say that I did not “ace” any of my exams (at least not in the traditional usage of the word “ace” meaning to “pwn” – though I did get As).

First, it’s important to note that the exams are scheduled early in the day (not early in the semester, you only learn your time less than a week in advance, meh), so in the fall semester at least you are dealing with the tired (thanks again neighbors for making noise until 3am), the dark, and the cold. This photo isn’t so dark, but it does capture the cold.

Yes that’s actually part of campus. I like it.

So, while you are tired and it’s dark and cold, you get to engage in a legal conversation where anywhere from 2 to 5 people are asking you questions. That’s the essential format of the oral exam. You talk, rather than write. Makes sense I suppose! It’s also worth noting, if it wasn’t obvious, but that you are alone. You don’t take the exam as a class, it’s one-by-one. Now, if the thought of being randomly asked questions from an entire semester’s worth of material and being expected to respond in real time makes you nervous, then perhaps being a lawyer isn’t the best field for you. I kid, but really instantaneous information recall is half the job in my experience. The good news for ye’ of timid presence, is that it’s not entirely random. Here’s why. When entering the judgment room, you pull a question out of a bowl (literally in some cases) and then you have anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes to prepare your answer to that question. During those 5 to 15 minutes, you can access ALL your notes (so long as they are printed, because f*ck trees amirite????). You can’t use your already-made notes in the exam, but you can use the notes you took from your notes during that 5 to 15 minute window (it makes sense just think about it for a second). This is why I don’t think the format is especially difficult. Unlike a written exam where you have between 3 and 12 hours and are expected to provide the most minuscule and precise of details (as well as discuss 8000 different applications of 12000 different rules), here you have somewhere around 10-15 minutes of discussion, and that’s it. As such, the expectations for microscopic detail aren’t as high.

So, here’s what I did, and it worked well. I just made an outline like I normally would. These outlines were generally quite large (I’m talking hundreds of pages in some cases) because a semester of law is a shit-ton of information. However, you then cabbage them down and use some lolzy formatting to get that outline down to less than 30 pages. You then make a table of contents for the outline, with large thematic areas divided into more specific sub-topics. Then you’re done. See, unlike the bulk of my classmates who seemed extremely stressed out, I didn’t even try to memorize any of that shit. Learning 350 pages of material, only to be asked about something which comprises 5 pages seemed like a massive waste of my time. Couple that with the fact that 60% of my classes are about crap I don’t care about, and yeah, you get the picture. In fact, outside of making the outline, I didn’t study for any of my exams. SB can vouch for this, people FUH-REAK out about studying for exams here (and by here I don’t just mean the Icelanders, I mean all the European students). Yet I didn’t study at all aside from the process of making/formatting the outline – and also for the record I never bought any of my textbooks and thus did none of the reading for the entire semester either.

If you’re getting tired of what might seem like gloating, bear with me. This isn’t leading up to an “I so smart” epiphany. I’m just a proponent of studying smart, not hard. So, here’s what I did. I used my categorized outline, and when I got the question, I used my 5 to 15 minutes to basically regurgitate that small section of the outline onto the page of notes I was allowed to bring into the exam – and, when the additional questions came, they were invariably also from that same section. So, if it was dealing with Directive 2000/60/EC, I’d know that the specific questions were going to be something like explaining the effects of a major Article of the directive, in that case probably Article 14, which effectively assimilated the public access requirements of the Aarhus Convention. That might sound obtuse without any topical knowledge, but once you’re familiar with the area and have your handy-dandy micro-outline, it’s not unexpected or particularly challenging. This is in contrast to the extremely long written exam, where even 12 hours isn’t enough time to go from “no studying” to “good grade” within the confines of the test.

The big caveat here is that you have to be very comfortable with the oral exam format, that is, real time legal conversations where you are outnumbered and where you truly have no idea what base question you’re going to get until you pull it out of the proverbial/literal hat. I’m fortunate in that such interactions don’t bother me, and that’s probably the only area of the entire process where I’d risk saying I’m above average. The fact that I was one of the top, or near the top grades in each of my classes had nothing to do with knowledge or devotion (of which I’d say I have less than most than my classmates), but instead to what I’d call a capitalizing “study” process and the fact that Ivory Tower Academics and fancy board-room tables don’t intimate me in the least. There’s also the fact that I could score 0.0000001 point above failing in all my classes and it would legitimately make no difference since my J.D. is my core degree anyway.

Thus, I’d say most of the difficulty in the format comes from the fact that you can’t prepare for a specific question, and that you need to be ok with verbal exchanges (that your grade depends on, and the exams are normally 50% of the grade – which is about 50% less than what I am used to, lol). The funny thing here, is that “cheating” is rampant. You might have already thought about the glaring issue, but if not, I’ll explain. As I mentioned, the exam takes place one-by-one, they can’t really drill a whole class at once, so there is a time-table, and you go in the judgement room one at a time, in set order. See the issue? While the questions are random to the individual, the questions are NOT infinite. In fact, some classes have as few as 4-5 questions – though others have as many as 20 (depending on the professor, obviously the more questions, the more complicated grading is for them). Now, you only get to see one question, but since that one question becomes the basis for your entire discussion, you don’t forget it, despite having to immediately return the question to the pile. So, naturally, as soon as you are done and leave the room, you either willing or unwillingly converse with your fellow students who have yet to take the exam, and tell them the question. I saw unwillingly because the culture is to wait right outside the exam room and relentlessly and somewhat aggressively pester the student who is leaving the room (regardless of how upset they might be) even if you never spoke to them outside of that moment. Yes, the culture is practically built around this kind of “cheating” – so much so that to not divulge your question is seen as being an asshole. I can safely say that I didn’t ask anyone about their question, because I didn’t care enough – and also didn’t want to you know, actually study, however I did tell people about my question, also because I didn’t care enough. However, if you were of the type that didn’t want to break the rules, or just didn’t want to help people get a better grade, then you’d have some serious peer pressure to deal with. The end result, is that as the day goes on, people who have yet to take the exam have built up a library of the questions, and if there are only 4-5 questions, this means that they’ve effectively seen the exam in advance.

But it doesn’t stop there. Ever industrious, the students will divide up the questions, and draft answers to the potential questions, and then copy them for themselves. Thus, a pool of 10 students might be able to generate 10 full answers, and then they just trade them. Of course this naturally means that the people early in the day have a much harder exam than the people latter in the day who may have “cheated” their way to a 50% chance at answering the question using materials they didn’t even make. Of course, I use scare quotes around “cheating” because even if you do use crowd-sourcing to obtain an answer to a question you end up getting, you’re left with an answer that isn’t your own and the hope that your attempts to memorize an entire textbook (or textbooks) are enough to answer the secondary questions, which are likely to be generated in real time. Still, the fact is that this behavior is extremely rampant, and I’d surmise causes a lot of people to pass where they would have otherwise probably failed. The cheating in and of itself doesn’t really bother me, it’s the fact that the first students are realistically being tested at a far different level than the later students, and that the professors – who are aware this goes on, or are stupid (not ignorant, stupid) – don’t seem to care. That is what bothers me. If everyone could, if they wished, cheat at the same level, then I really don’t care – but this cheating is objectively slanted towards groups later in the day.

But in the end I still did better than most, and I didn’t cheat, or read the books, or really study, I just made a really organized table of contents and pasted that on the front of a 30 page, double-sided, 8 point font, .01 margins, legal monstrosity. Yay autismz. 😀

Anyways, that’s my thoughts on school. It’s weird, and while I’m not a big fan of my program as a whole, I am looking forward to the thesis, which will be entirely my own and on a topic I am very much interested in. Unfortunately I’m going to be quite pressed for time on it (due to the aforementioned timeline snafu), but I’m still excited to give the whole thesis thing a second go, though this one is going to be 2.5 times as long as my first one and is going to be published (and thus subjected to far more scrutiny). But I’m still excited in my good ole’ masochistic way – and, lest it seem otherwise, I have no regrets about where I’m at or what I’m doing, even if the road has been much rockier than expected.

If you thought this post featured a little bit too much complaining or bragging about school, have no fear, I’ll probably go right back to not talking very much about it for awhile. 🙂

With that, I should probably wrap this up. I had originally just wanted to just talk about school, but then I decided to add in some other things, and now look at that, this post is over 5700 words. I am nothing if not hopelessly verbose. I promise I can actually be concise when I need to be! Apparently that writing style just doesn’t crop up in my blogging, it, after all, it is mah’ hot blog, I do wut I wahnt!

If it wasn’t obvious, this will be the final post of 2017 for Dinosaur Bear. I hope you’ve enjoyed another year worth of my rambling – and boy what a year it has been. I already have another post conceptualized, though I’m not sure when I’ll get around to writing it. In the meantime, I hope you all had a Merry Christmas (or various holiday of your choosing) and that you have a Wonderful New Year.

Here’s Uglan (the mascot of Háskóli Íslands), with a Holiday (Christmas + New Year’s) send-off!

This is likely my last or second-to-last post for 2017, so I’ve decided to have a bit of fun! One of the best things about traveling is getting to learn more about other cultures – or, as Mark Twain once put it:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

The holidays are an especially good occasion for such exploration, and SB and I have definitely taken to trying to learn more about Iceland’s Christmas traditions. In this post I’ll share what I’ve learned, though the obvious caveat here is that I don’t know Icelandic, so I’m mostly relying on translations and interpretations of other people. That said, I’ve relied almost exclusively on materials written in English by Icelanders, so hopefully I don’t share any egregiously incorrect information! So let’s get started!

The first thing to know about Iceland’s Christmas (Jól) traditions is that they can trace their lineage well into the mythos of Icelandic folklore. These are, by and large, not modern tales woven to sell you Christmas cards. They’ve certainly been streamlined, modified, combined, and clarified over the years – but the basic foundation is extremely old. These customs are also much more… “old world,” than those cuddly feel-good Christmas tales which have largely been adopted into mainstream U.S. culture. If you thought coal was cruel, how does being torn to shreds by a giant cat sound? Yep.

I, however, find these tales to be far more interesting – indeed, the older more “raw” versions of classical tales which lack their contemporary filters often appeal to me far more than their Hallmark Channel counterparts. The core messages are still roughly the same: be kind, love your family, and be festive. The difference here is that yo’ ass gets eaten alive if you’re naughty. Hard lands breed hard men.

So, with that framework in mind, let’s discuss how things work. Here I should probably note that a lot of the modern iterations of these characters stems from Jóhannes úr Kötlum’s 1932 poetry book, Jólin Koma (“Christmas Is Coming”). So while there are a lot of different very-very-old tales from which these characters are woven, that modern source is the primary basis for this post.

First off, clear your mind of Santa – he wouldn’t last a night in the harsh world of Iceland’s folktales. Instead, think of the 13 “Yule Lads” also known as the Yuletide-Lads or Yulemen – or in Icelandic, jólasveinarnir or jólasveinar. These 13 “lads” are trolls (or half trolls, not entirely sure as different sources referred to them as both) who come to visit the human population of Iceland around the holidays. The Yule Lads make up, what I would call, the crux of the Christmas festivities here in Iceland. But in order to fully understand the importance of the Yule Lads, we must first discuss their mother, Grýla.

Grýla is a troll/giantess who is said to currently live in a cave somewhere in the Dimmuborgir lava fields (which, as you will soon see, is somewhat fittingly where Satan came crashing down from Heaven in Icelandic Christian folklore).

Here Grýla lives with her somewhat lackadaisical third husband and father of the Yule Lads, the troll Leppalúði – but we’ll talk more about him in a second. Grýla is noteworthy for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that she is very, very old. She was first referenced in text during the 1200s, so it’s not unlikely that she’s even older than that. Grýla’s death has been noted more than once, but the old troll seems to know to cheat death itself, because she just keeps coming back to plague the Icelanders, specifically Icelandic children – and by plague I mean drag them screaming into the blackness and eating them alive.

The good news is that Grýla apparently only goes on her carnivorous quest around Christmas, meaning that your chances of meeting a terrible fate at her hands are restricted to at least a small slice of the year. Further good news, Grýla can be staved off simply by resisting the urge to be naughty. Due to some mythological rule-set, or perhaps just a very odd sense of morality, Grýla only eats bad children. If you found the prospect of coal to be a lukewarm deterrent to engaging in the oh-so-much-fun act of being naughty, perhaps a savage death is a bit more of a barrier to naughtiness.

Now, if you might be thinking that Grýla’s husband Leppalúði is likely to be just as malicious of a character. Turns out, not so much. I mean, he looks mean and probably isn’t the type of creature you’d want to run into in a dark cave, but in comparison to Grýla he’s quite tame – and apparently quiet lazy (or at the very least, aloof).

Now, with a wife like Grýla it’s not surprising that he definitely appears to be the submissive partner in the relationship. Add in the fact that Grýla just up and ate her first husband (and let’s be real, likely her second husband too) and you get an environment in which ole’ Leppalúði has probably learned to keep his trap shut and just tend to the cave and the children like a good husband. Indeed, Leppalúði – at least from what I’ve read – seems to be a bit of a (comparatively) mild-mannered homebody who mostly keeps the feck out of Grýla’s way (can you blame him?) and who probably spends most of his time dealing with the Yule Lad’s antics. In some ways the Yule Lads might be described as the balance between Grýla’s evil antics and Leppalúði’s buffoonery. The good news for us humans is that Leppalúði doesn’t seem to go hunting for people in the same fashion as his wife does.

That’s not to say that Grýla is the only bad news. While her husband might be tame, and while the Yule Lads are, as we will soon discuss, prone to mischief as opposed to murder, Grýla also owns a giant cat known as the Yule Cat (Jólakötturinn or Jólaköttur).

Now let’s be clear, this is not your average domestic cat. The Yule Cat might better be described as a “monster” in that it is huge and hungry for humans. Whereas its master (Grýla) preys on naughty children, the Yule Cat hunts down and ravages those who haven’t gotten any new clothes to wear prior to Christmas Eve. Oh, and lest you big-people think you are safe, the Yule Cat eats adults too – though naturally children are of course also on the menu!

So now you’ve got a nice picture of Mom ‘n Pop and their carnivorous cat, so let’s discuss the real stars of the show, the Yule Lads.

There are, in the modern iterations, 13 canonical Yule Lads (though this number has drastically varied over the lads’ long and storied history – see my comment about Jóhannes úr Kötlum above). Unlike their baby-eating mother, lazy father, and deadly pet, the Yule Lads care much more about being mischievous and having fun (mostly for them, less so the people they annoy) around Christmas time. A lot of this stems from the fact that their mother keeps them locked away for most of the year, unable to explore the great outdoors. It’s only around Christmas that she lets them out to play – or perhaps Leppalúði just doesn’t have the energy to corral the Yule Lads while Grýla and the Yule Cat are off eating people. Regardless of the exact manner in which they are able to get out and about, the 13 Yule Lads start to “come to town” one at a time on December 12th, and each Lad has a different set of characteristics which define the antics they get themselves into.

The 13 lads, with English translations, as well as their arrival and departure dates are listed below.

Icelandic name

English translation

Description

Arrival

Departure

Stekkjarstaur

Sheep-Cote Clod

Harasses sheep, but is impaired by his stiff peg-legs.

12 December

25 December

Giljagaur

Gully Gawk

Hides in gullies, waiting for an opportunity to sneak into the cowshed and steal milk.

13 December

26 December

Stúfur

Stubby

Abnormally short. Steals pans to eat the crust left on them.

14 December

27 December

Þvörusleikir

Spoon-Licker

Steals Þvörur (a type of a wooden spoon with a long handle – I. þvara) to lick. Is extremely thin due to malnutrition.

15 December

28 December

Pottaskefill

Pot-Scraper

Steals leftovers from pots.

16 December

29 December

Askasleikir

Bowl-Licker

Hides under beds waiting for someone to put down their “askur” (a type of bowl with a lid used instead of dishes), which he then steals.

17 December

30 December

Hurðaskellir

Door-Slammer

Likes to slam doors, especially during the night.

18 December

31 December

Skyrgámur

Skyr-Gobbler

A Yule Lad with an affinity for Skyr.

19 December

1 January

Bjúgnakrækir

Sausage-Swiper

Would hide in the rafters and snatch sausages that were being smoked.

20 December

2 January

Gluggagægir

Window-Peeper

A snoop who would look through windows in search of things to steal.

21 December

3 January

Gáttaþefur

Doorway-Sniffer

Has an abnormally large nose and an acute sense of smell which he uses to locate laufabrauð.

22 December

4 January

Ketkrókur

Meat-Hook

Uses a hook to steal meat.

23 December

5 January

Kertasníkir

Candle-Stealer

Follows children in order to steal their candles (which in those days were made of tallow and thus edible).

24 December

6 January

As you can see from the table, each Lad arrives on a separate date, and they stay “in town” until all of them have arrived, upon which they start departing – again one at a time – back to their mountain home. In total, this means that the Yule Lads are causing chaos in some format or another from December 12th all the way until January 6th.

If this story has seemed a bit… unpleasant.. thus far, what with the deadly endeavors of Grýla and the Yule Cat, coupled with the Yule Lads’ seeds of chaos, and Leppalúði’s “meh whatever” attitude about all of it, then have no fear, things perk up from here. While the Yule Lads have changed a bit over the centuries, their current manifestations are also known for bringing presents to those who act properly! Of course at a basic level you need to be good (lest their mom find you), and you also need new clothes (lest their cat eat you), but also need to leave one of your shoes on the window sill of your room to let the most-recently arrived Yule Lad know you are there! If you really want their good graces, you will also leave them a treat – but make no mistake, this isn’t a one-size-fits all cookies-and-milk fallback. Each Yule Lad has their own preferred “treat” and you don’t want to mix them up! Some are easy to remember, for instance Skyrgámur (Skyr-Gobbler) likes Skyr most of all. Whereas others, like Þvörusleikir (Spoon-licker) have less obvious tastes, such as carrots . Still, others, like Stúfur (Stubby) are likely to eat whatever you leave them without much fuss. In addition to food, you can also leave certain Lads items such as spoons (wooden!) or candles.

If you follow the proper protocol, you’ll likely to wake up to a present/treat of your own in the shoe you left out (as well as some classical Yule Lad mischief). However, if you don’t follow the proper traditions and/or are naughty, you’ll just get an old potato! An old potato might not be much, but it’s better than being eaten alive, though the potato is probably a warning sign that you need to start cleaning up your act real quick-like, lest Mommy Dearest find you.

It’s also important to note that the Yule Lads, much like their foreign counterparts, only come at night. Being trolls (or half trolls) and living in a dark cave most of the year has made their eyes sensitive to the light, so be sure not to leave too many lights on when you leave out your shoes and treat – the Yule Lads see far better in the dark! If you do find yourself face to face with a Yule Lad, a surefire way to get their good graces is to wish them a Gleðileg Jól (Happy Christmas).

It’s also worth noting that if you follow the proper procedures and have a bit of faith, that the Yule Lads have been known to travel far beyond Iceland’s coasts to leave presents for those who tempt them with especially good treats. So if you aren’t in Iceland, but still want to participate in some Yule Lad fun, you know what to do – just watch out for Grýla and her monstrous cat.

So there you go, a nice primer on the Yule Lads and their crazy family.

But that’s not all that goes in Iceland during the holidays. While the Yule Lads provide the backdrop to the season, there are a few other events and traditions that are widespread.

The first is Aðventa (The Advent) which starts on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and is the “official” start of the season in Iceland. It’s also when most of the Christmas lights begin to appear. In addition to modern lights, traditional Aðventa came in two formats: an Advent Wreath with four candles (one for each Sunday of Advent), and a seven-candle candelabra which was, being quite bright, was believed to keep out the winter’s darkness.

If this talk of lighting has you wondering about Christmas trees, then have no fear, Iceland has those too – though they are a more recent phenomenon in the manner you probably imagine a Christmas tree. For most of Iceland’s settled history there really weren’t that many trees that could be cut down, so the Christmas trees were made of wood scrapped together from other things, and then mounted with juniper branches and candles. As Iceland “opened” to the world (and attempts at reforestation began), real live Christmas trees became more accessible, and today most Icelanders use Christmas trees which appear much like those you’d find elsewhere – and they predominantly use real trees as opposed to fake ones. One interesting note is that the Christmas trees themselves often weren’t (and aren’t) lit in the home until just a day or two before Christmas, but the lights are left up until January 6th (which just so happens to be the last day the Yule Lads are around).

Second, I’m sure you’re wondering about food. Well, there’s all sorts of it, just like anyplace else. A few notable examples are the vast array of cookies which get baked, as well as the staple of Laufabrauð – which, directly translated, means “leaf bread.” The baking of the Laufabrauð is a family event, and great care is put into making the Laufabrauð as fancy as possible – sometimes it ends up so fancy that it gets turned into decorations as opposed to being eaten! Laufabrauð is generally served during both Christmas and New Year’s, paired with delicious smjör (butter).

There is also a traditional drink which is a mixture of locally produced malt (Maltöl) and orange soda (Appelsín). The mixture, Malt og Appelsín, is so popular that it can be purchased pre-mixed as Jólabland (Christmas Mix), though many Icelanders still take the time to mix it themselves. The exact ratio of malt to soda is hotly debated, and that’s territory I shan’t risk entering. 🙂

While foodstuffs beyond the sweet include the scrumptious fare that you might imagine for Iceland, including: herring, smoked and cured salmon, reindeer pâté, smoked lamb, roast pork with rind, rack of ham, turkey, and more – December 23rd brings about something a bit more intriguing, Skötuveislur or fermented skate. Skate is a type fish, which as you might have guessed, has been fermented. Traditionally this one done by sealing the skate in a closed container for a month or more (sound familiar?). The resulting dish is known just as much for its extremely pungent smell as its taste. In fact, I’ve been told that the smell is so difficult to get out of your house that a lot of people opt just to go get Skötuveislur from a restaurant these days. I’ve yet to try this delicacy, and honestly after kæstur hákarl I can’t say I’ll be seeking it out. That said, it’s still a strong tradition, so if you find yourself in Iceland on December 23rd you’ll know what that pervasive smell in the air is!

Perhaps the smell of fermented skate brings about thoughts of the after life. As on December 24th (and on New Year’s Eve) Icelanders remember their departed loved ones. They do so by visiting cemeteries and leaving candles on the graves of the departed. One of the most aesthetic cemeteries during this time is Hólavallagarður, a cemetery from 1832 which overlooks Tjörnin – so not very far from us at all.

There’s also the “Christmas Book Flood” which you may have seen as the following image floating around social media.

In Icelandic this is refereed to as Jólabókaflóð (The book flood of Christmas), and it’s largely true to the tidbit being passed around the interwebs. The one big difference is that it’s not quite as confined as the image makes it seem (its more chronologically far-reaching), but it’s still a big deal (and yes chocolate is a part of it). A few weeks ago SB and I noticed that the stores were starting to accumulate a TON of books – we had no idea what was going on at first, but now we do! And for reference, I mean, literal tons of books.

Once you’ve got your new collection of books, you have to be careful, as the holiday season brings bonfires to Iceland – and I mean a lot of bonfires. Long before fireworks made it to the arctic north, bonfires served essentially the same purpose – the symbolic burning of the old year, old sins, and the celebration of bright futures to come. The many “brennur” (burns) are community events and occur mostly on New Year’s Eve and The Thirteenth Night. Also, these aren’t just piddly little campfires, these are legitimate bonfires.

While fireworks have since joined the ranks of Icelandic New Year’s traditions, the bonfires remain.

Finally, as the season winds down, we come to Þrettándinn, the “Thirteenth Night” (the equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon “Twelfth Night” you might be familiar with).

Like New Year’s Eve, bonfires are prevalent during Þrettándinn – but Þrettándinn is also a night of great, ancient, mystery. In Icelandic folklore, Þrettándinn caused strange and mythical beings to stir from their slumber. Many of these awakenings could be dangerous for humans (such as talking cows which would drive those who listened to them mad), and others, such as seals which shed their skins and walked among men, were just downright creepy. Þrettándinn, the official end of the season, also sees elves come out en masse (including the elf “king” and “queen”), as well as other mythical creatures and beasts. It’s also the final day the Yule Lads are in town, and if you make it through the night without falling victim to one of the various dangers of the dark, you’ll also know that Grýla and the Yule Cat have retreated back into the hinterlands for the year.

Like most other aspects of the season in Iceland, while evil and mischief lurk in the shadows, there is a great deal of symbolism to light, family, and the community. So stay close to the fire’s warm glow and those who you care about, and you’re likely to find yourself safe, full of delicious food, and spiritually satisfied even against the long dark night of Þrettándinn.

And that, dear friends, is Dinosaur Bear’s coverage of Jól. This is of course, not an even remotely exhaustive list, and as with any compilation of traditions, beliefs and practices will vary from one family to the next. It also leaves out a few important events, but this is a nice overview to the season, from an outsiders perspective with a focus on what seems especially “unique” to yours truly. I hope that if you’re new to all of this like me, you’ve found it especially interesting, and, conversely, if this is what you grew up with, that I didn’t get anything too out of whack. 🙂

In closing, here is a nice “cheat sheet” of the cast-of-characters (sans Yule Cat) referenced within this post. I’ve left the image uncompressed for easier viewing.

If you’d like an English translation of the poem upon which the modern iteration of the Yule Lads are based, click here.

Until next time,
Gleðileg jól og farsælt nýtt ár!

-Taco

Note: Unlike most Dinosaur Bear posts, the photos in this post are taken from the public websites of other photographers or organizations. All photographic/artistic works represented here remain the property of their respective owners – and as a reminder Dinosaur Bear is a non-monetized blog with no ads or other revenue sources. If you are the owner of one of the photos/works and would like it to be removed, please let me know.

So the Holidays have come and gone. It is no great surprise that I didn’t manage to write a post while at home, which was really little more than wishful thinking last post. Still, I have just a little bit of time before I leave again (this time for work, not fun) so here is an overview of SB and I’s Holiday Season 2015.

It started on Christmas-Eve-Eve-Eve, which was less than 12 hours after the end of my last 10 hour exam of the semester.

As usual, we kept things pretty low-key here in the household. SB and I don’t technically buy gifts for each other anymore, and haven’t for a few years, but we normally do something to celebrate. The boys of course do get presents.

They really enjoy opening things. The good news about our children is that they don’t want for much and are happy with whatever they receive.

This year they even had some treats (Chia bars) in their stalkings.

All said and done it was a great morning. The boys got three candles (Gun Powder, Topsoil, and Cedar & Saffron – it’s not hard to figure who got which one), some Chia bars, some hot cocoa (to be shared with me), some Chukar Cherries and Biscottis (from Washington!) and everyone got some more coffee (including Valentino’s favorite “Raska” [Yukon] blend).

After our celebration we went out for lunch, which is our Christmas tradition. It was raining, but not cold (it was in the 60s – craziness). We went downtown to the “One Financial Center” which was a fancy building.

The mushroom sandwich I had was really good, but overall the place was basically a glorified cafeteria for business people. The real excitement came after lunch when we finally went down and visited Harpoon Brewery which was on our Boston Bucket List.

We were originally planning on going to the Boston Ballet (also on our Boston Bucket List) to see The Nut Cracker but ended up changing our minds due to the price and some inconvenient elements to buying the “Student Rush” tickets. So now we’re just going to go see Swan Lake instead, which is something SB hasn’t seen before (I haven’t seen either).

But back to Harpoon, we took the Silver Line down there. Harpoon is actually in the Sea Port district, which is what it sounds like, a sea port.

From the bus stop it was literally “Follow the Harpoon Road”:

Which lead to the front doors, adorned with a big “H” handle, which I enjoyed more than I probably should have.

Inside they had a big Christmas Tree, made from their Winter Warmer cans.

We were going to do the 2pm tour, but it was full, so we had to wait for the 3pm tour. This wasn’t an issue because the “waiting room” is a beer hall.

We quickly decided to get some beer (or rather had decided before even arriving) and went with their specialty sampler, which contains some small-batch, limited variety beers.

I was not a big fan of the Maple Cider, but SB seemed ok with it (she is more of a cider person than me). But I thoroughly enjoyed the other beers, and the Tea Party Ale may have been the most “smoky” beer I have ever tried, I swear there was liquid smoke in there or something.

A lot of the offerings here were not available anywhere else (kind of like at Sam Adams).

And although they don’t have a food menu per se, they do have AMAZING pretzels.

They are both huge and gooey. Also, they come with cheeses and sauces made from various Harpoon beers, and if that wasn’t enough the pretzels are made from leftover brewing yeast. Yup.

Soon enough we started the tour, which cost 5$.

At first I wasn’t so sure about that 5$ as most brewery tours are free. But that changed soon enough. We first passed through a “staging” area for shipment. It was so much beer, this picture below was only about 1/3 of it.

Then we passed into the actual brewing warehouse.

In this room I learned that Harpoon was founded by three Harvard graduates (none of whom knew how to brew, but appreciated finer beer – so they hired a brewer) and that the building it is in was used as a dry dock to build Destroyers during WWII. It had sat empty since then (mid 80s) and when the founders bought it there was still a bunch of nautical stuff in there – thus the name Harpoon.

Next up was the tasting room, which is where that 5$ paid dividends. Plus there were tons of cool old beers in there.

The way it worked was that you had 15 minutes to try as much of the on-tap samples as possible.

Challenge accepted.

And while the glass were small, they were also, as mentioned, unlimited.

All of which were good, I was surprised by how strong Leviathan was (10% ABV), but I think Hoppy Adventure might have been my favorite, while Raz was my least favorite.

After our 15 minutes of fame, the tour continued.

We also got to see the packing area in action.

Afterwards the tour wrapped up and we headed over to the gift shop to see if we could find a magnet. Sadly we couldn’t find a magnet, but we did find something else.

Its the Harpoon UFO Hefeweizen, which neither of us had had before. Kudos to SB, she was actually the one that pressed to get a growler. I’m glad we decided to get one, as now we have one from both Samuel Adams and Harpoon! More on this bad-boy at the end of the post.

The next day, Christmas Eve-Eve, we began our trek home.

The boys are good travelers, though this was Pig’s first time on a plane! He was pretty excited.

As we took off the ride was a bit rough, and we did that “drop” thing in the air a few times, but nothing too extreme.

If the bumpy ride bothered Pig, he certainly didn’t show it.

After the bouncy start we were up and away, with mostly smooth sailing.

It was storming back home, but the landing was surprisingly mellow, aside from the horizontal rain. MIL picked us up and Tristen immediately went for his favorite pillow, or perhaps crown is a better name for it.

Our first Christmas was at MIL and FIL’s, where we were of course greatly spoiled. Of course the Boys also got spoiled, including their new tent (or “Rastle”).

Flopsy joined in on the fun.

Aside from presents at the three houses (Christmas Eve: MIL/FIL, Dad | Christmas: Meem) there was also plenty of alcohol to be found. And by alcohol I mean beer (to be fair there was all kinds, but really I just like beer).

Jiahu is based on a recipe/residue from around 9,000 years ago, from Northern China. Preserved pottery jars found in the Neolithic villiage of Jiahu, in Henan province, have revealed that a mixed fermented beverage of rice, honey and fruit was being produced that long ago, right around the same time that barley beer and grape wine were beginning to be made in the Middle East! Fast forward to 2005. Molecular archaeologist Dr. Patrick McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology calls on Dogfish Head to re-create another ancient beverage, and Chateau Jiahu is born. In keeping with historic evidence, Dogfish brewers use brown rice syrup, orange blossom honey, muscat grape, barley malt and hawthorn berry. The wort is fermented for about a month with sake yeast until the beer is ready for packaging. Like most of the Ancient Ales I’ve had thus far, this rides the line between beer and wine. However, at ~9,000 years old, this is by far the oldest beer I’ve ever had and coming in at 10% ABV it definitely wasn’t weak in the knees (it was only 10 IBUs though).

Next up was the Black & Blue, which while not an ancient ale, still packed a punch (10% ABV).

Black & Blue is a Belgian-style golden ale fermented with blackberries and blueberries. Because we dose Black & Blue with real berries rather than artificial flavoring the fruit comes through in the flavor, not just the aroma. The pureed berries are added as the beer leaves the brewhouse. In fermentation, the yeast feeds on sugars from the barley and the berries, giving Black & Blue a unique complexity and a high ABV. It was actually pretty dang good for a fruit beer. It had just the right about of sweetness and bite (25 IBUs).

Last up was Birra Estrusca, which to be totally honest I couldn’t even figure out the name of for awhile because they split it along 3 lines of text.

Birra Etrusca was my New Year’s Eve beer (well, the first one anyways). This beer is based on a beverage that may have been enjoyed by the Etruscans (Tuscany) of Ancient Italy around 800 BC. A strong ale containing an Italian heirloom grain called Cappelli Senatore, along with pomegranate juice, raisins, and hazelnut flour, together with 3 types of honey: chestnut, wildflower, and clover. Spiced with several hop flowers, Gentian root and tree resin (think Myrrh) in the kettle. It leaned a bit too much on the wine side of the scale, which isn’t surprising considering that it came from Italy (or rather what would eventually become Italy). At 8.5% ABV it was the “weakest” of the three Dogfish Head beers I received, tough 8.5% isn’t really a weak beer in Murka.

Moving on, on Christmas Eve night we had a cool full moon, the first time such a Christmas Eve full moon had occurred since 2007 (and wont happen again until 2016).

Sadly it didn’t come out too well since I used my phone, I would have used the shiny new camera FIL bought us, but we hadn’t received the screen protector for it yet.

After Christmas had came and gone, Meem and Daryl 1 and the boys (including Flopsy, his first ever out-of-MIL/FIL’s adventure!) went out to run some errands and eat.

Valentino was quick to don his brand new Bears jersey he received from Grandma Meem, while Flopsy brought along his trusty football to match.

Pig was rocking his winter hat (from MIL).

As was Tristen.

After hooking Daryl 1 up with his sweet authoritah’ leather jacket, we decided to go eat. We were going to try Little Zagreb (an amazing steak place) but found out it was closed on Sundays. So we went to outback instead.

Tristen was kind enough to let me eat my potato.

The following day I went out on a duo trip with Meem (via some “Meem Coupons” I won long ago in an Easter Egg hunt where SB and Daryl 1 tried to cheat against me and tied my shoes together and blocked me and what not). Meem and I went and saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This was actually my second time seeing it, I had went out for dinner and a movie with two friends the same night SB and I arrived home (I see my friends all of 1-2 times per year anymore). Star Wars was just as good the second time. We almost didn’t see it, it was sold out in the first theater, so we drove across town and watched a later showing. After the movie we tried to go to Little Zagreb, but it was still closed for the holidays, despite their website saying they were open (we later found out, via Daryl 1, that their Facebook said they were closed). So we went to a place called Crazy Horse (which I had went to with SB, Dad, and Stepmom back around my 21st birthday and gotten very drunk at).

It was half gone at that point, but you get the picture. It was funny, our waitress didn’t know which Dogfish Head they had, so she went and asked. The bartender told her it was their Pilsner, which is what she then told me. However, it was the 60 Minute IPA. That probably would have worked on most Coors Light-swilling undergrads, but not me. Of course I didn’t complain because I like the 60 Minute.

For dinner I actually got to eat my steak this time.

I actually had more steak while home than I had had in the 1-2 years prior, easily. In fact we finally did get to go to Little Zagreb after being denied twice. This third time (‘s a charm) it was Meem, SB, Daryl 1, the Boys (including Flopsy) and I.

SB and I shared the sirloin for two, it was just as amazing as I remembered. Tristen ate himself into a coma.

Then, on New Years day, when Dad, Stepmon, and Daryl 2 were taking SB and I back to airport, we stopped at The Coachman for lunch, where I had corned beef and cabbage for good luck and because I hadn’t already eaten like 12 pounds of red meat while we were home.

We got to the airport early and decided to just head in since it was so dang cold (winter had finally arrived – next year). The flight back was pretty non-eventful, though we did get to see some cool weather, such as when we broke through the cloud cover.

And found puffy cotton candy skies (Pig was amazed).

At one point we noticed all the Boys looking out the window at something.

Turns out it was a really cool “hatch-mark” pattern in the clouds.

Had I not quit my meteorology program I could have told you what caused that.

Before too long the sun started to set, which makes sense since it gets dark at 1pm in Boston.

Right around this time SB and I noticed something interesting. Tucked away in one of the little seat-back inserts, and way down at the bottom of said insert, was a small-font sentence that said there were free cocktails on New Years Day. SB asked about it, and sure enough, certain days of the year Southwest gives free booze. Of course they DO NOT go out of their way to mention this. In fact the Flight Attendant pretty much confirmed outright that they don’t tell you about it, or even hint at it, or really even want you to find it. But we did. Since we were in the air and still had to navigate public transportation home we opted to share a Leinenkugel’s Cranberry Ginger Shandy.

It was really good, definitely something I’d recommend and would buy in a six pack. It was basically a shandy for winter time.

After our beer it was getting dark, so we used the last little portion of the flight to close our eyes and chill (I can’t sleep on planes).

And before too long we were back in Boston.

Our flight actually arrived about 25 minutes early, but we lost all that time waiting on our luggage. We normally don’t check luggage on the Holidays, but we took it home this year to carry presents to, and from, home.

So, all in all it was a very busy, yet fun holiday trip for us. We got lots of spoils (material and otherwise) and enjoyed getting to see everyone. It was definitely a nice break after the law school exam craziness, and while I have hardly any time at home before New Mexico, I still wish the holidays could have lasted just a little bit longer. 🙂

Speaking of things lasting a bit longer, that Harpoon growler (UFO Hefeweizen) was actually supposed to be drank within 72 hours… whoops. SB and I didn’t get to it until ~288 hours later, a full 216 hours past the recommended drinking time. The bad news, it had gone a little flat. The good news, it was still good and it wasn’t completely flat.

Bearing in mind that this beer was 216 hours past its “Best By” date, I have to stay that it turned out pretty good. The aroma has a faint but clear citrus-like character. This is produced by the special yeast and accounts for the Bavarian tradition of serving hefeweizens with a lemon. The lemon accentuates the yeast’s fruity, tart fragrance. It has a soft mouthfeel and a refreshing, light body. The wheat malts and subtle hopping give the beer a mild, delicate flavor. I’d really like to try this beer at full crispness, but still, I don’t think SB and I will have any problems polishing off this growler tonight. 🙂 Of course its only 4.8% ABV, so we won’t be getting too crazy.

Anyways, I’d actually like to spend some time relaxing before bed since I have to pack tomorrow, so, although I said it last post, I’ll repeat it again here since this is Dinosaur Bear’s inaugural 2016 post.